At Thanksgiving dinner, Clemmons told friends and family of plans to kill many more people

And his friends and family did nothing. The story is in the Tacoma News Tribune:

Clemmons made threats to kill schoolchildren, pedestrians
December 2nd, 2009 10:13 PM (PST)

Maurice Clemmons threatened to kill more than just cops in the days before he massacred four Lakewood police officers at a coffee shop in Parkland.

Schoolchildren and others also were on his list of targets, according to court records filed Wednesday.

A witness told Pierce County sheriff’s detectives that Clemmons told friends and family gathered for Thanksgiving dinner at his aunt’s home in Pacific that he planned to kill “cops, children at a school” and “as many people as he could in an intersection,” according to an affidavit filed by prosecutors.

Clemmons had bailed out of jail the day before.

None of those assembled Thursday reported the statements to police, and Clemmons repeated his desire to kill cops on Saturday, according to court records.

He made good on his threat against police Sunday morning, gunning down Sgt. Mark Renninger and officers Tina Griswold, Greg Richards and Ronald Owens at the Forza Coffee Co. shop on Steele Street South.

Richards managed to shoot Clemmons in the torso before being killed.

Clemmons returned to his aunt’s home after the shooting and received treatment for his wound and fresh clothing before being driven away, according to the affidavit.

A woman who lives in the house told detectives that before he left Clemmons said “he was going with a girl, he was going to rest and he was going to heal but he wasn’t done,” the affidavit states.

Clemmons ran and hid from police until early Tuesday morning when Seattle police officer Benjamin L. Kelly shot him dead on a quiet street in the Rainier Valley neighborhood of Seattle. Authorities said Clemmons was carrying a gun taken from one of the dead Lakewood officers at the time.

Originally published: December 2nd, 2009 06:07 PM (PST)

December 3

Mike Berman writes:

This horrible story illustrates the commonality between Muslims and blacks as adversaries of civilization. Both populations have an extremist minority which is willing to act on their antipathy for Western civilization and a majority of sympathetic enablers. Without the majority accessory before the fact and after the fact enablers, these extremist monsters would not be nearly the threat that they are.

Terry Morris writes:

On some level this just simply blows my mind. I mean, a group of family and friends is sitting down together at Thanksgiving dinner of all things, and one of the group announces to the rest that he’s going to commit mass murder. What kind of a screwed-up “family” is it that produces people like that? Not just Clemmons himself, but his enablers? Obviously he isn’t the extreme exception in this “family,” apparently he’s the rule.

As far as his friends go, well, as I said before, birds of a feather flock together. If every adult at that gathering does not receive a lengthy prison sentence for his/her complicity in this outrageous crime, then there is no justice.

LA replies:

As far as I can tell, to be guilty of any indirect or participatory role in a crime, under such categories as conspiracy or accessory before the fact, the person has to have agreed to be part of the act or taken some step to advance the act. If A tells B, “I’m going to murder C.,” and B does nothing, and A. proceeds to kill C, I can’t find any indication that B has committed a crime.

accessory before the fact—a person who procures or advises or commands the commission of a felony but who is not present at its perpetration

accessary, accessory—someone who helps another person commit a crime

Terry Morris replies:

Well, I guess it would be hard to prove, wouldn’t it. They could simply say that they thought he wasn’t being serious in making these threats, or, that they feared for their own lives if they ratted him out. Both of which are pretty damn weak as far as I’m concerned, particularly given his violent criminal background on the one hand, and the fact that it’s clearly immoral not to do all in your power to prevent such a crime when you have knowledge that it will occur, based on some bogus “I was afraid for my own life” excuse.

But wasn’t Tim McVeigh’s “accomplice” convicted and sentenced on evidence that he did nothing to stop the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City? Wasn’t his a crime of omission?

Mr. Morris continues:

Misprision of crime. (short article in Time magazine)

LA replies:

Interesting.

Also, here’s how to pronounce it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 03, 2009 01:45 AM | Send